Photo: A look inside the historic organ case showing the crowd of inaccessible pipes
Introducing the Organ Committee
Have you ever held on to an old car for too long, continually making minor repairs to avoid having to buy a new one? How about that old house? Did you make do with its size limitations and aging systems out of familiarity, or habit, or just to avoid the hassle of shopping for a new home?
It may surprise parishioners to learn that this is the state of our Historic Church pipe organ, which four independent experts have advised us to replace completely rather than continuing to make costly stopgap repairs. We have learned that our current organ, although serviceable, was never anything special and has suffered questionable modernization efforts in the past.
Help is on the way. A major bequest by a beloved parishioner, the late James V. Robinson, has provided basic funding to evaluate and upgrade our current instrument. A special vestry committee has been working for almost two years to make this decision to replace it, approved by the vestry at its October meeting. The organ committee includes Tucker Bonner, chair, Elaine Hunt, Eric Leibrock, Kenneth Lightle, Jim Norman, Colby Simpson, and Fr. Chuck Treadwell.
The committee’s next steps will be to arrange additional funding in partnership with the stewardship committee, and then to identify and hire an appropriate organ builder. The very preliminary estimate of the total cost is about $2 million dollars. This is the first of a series of forthcoming articles and activities which will further explain our organ’s history, its shortcomings, the organ committee’s work so far, and our plans to replace it with a new instrument that will itself be a work of art.
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